An Eco-friendly safari

The great missionary traveler, Dr. David Livingstone once wrote "No one can imagine the beauty of the view from anything witnessed in England. It had never been seen before by European eyes, but scenes so lovely must have been gazed upon by angels in their flight"

It was the mighty Zambezi which led missionary Dr. David Livingstone on his greatest and final adventure.

In search of a means to access the African interior, Livingstone tagged the Zambezi "God's highway" to the Indian Ocean and set off down the river, discovering the great cataract native Africans called Mosi-oa-Tunya, "the smoke that thunders."

Livingstone christened the great waterfall Victoria Falls after his queen.

There are few appropriate superlatives that have not already been applied to this magnificent natural wonder of the world; in many ways it defies description. So vast are the Victoria Falls and their setting that it is difficult to grasp their true grandeur.

The Victoria Falls offer an inescapable closeness to the natural elements. The towering column of spray when the river is high, the thunder of the falling water, the terrifying abyss that separates Zimbabwe from Zambia, the forest - lined, placid, tranquil lagoons upstream in which hippo and deadly crocodiles lurk.

Described by the Kololo tribe living in the area in the 1800’s as ‘Mosi-oa-Tunya’ - ‘the Smoke that Thunders’ and in more modern terms as ‘the greatest known curtain of falling water’, the Victoria Falls are a spectacular sight of awe-inspiring beauty and grandeur on the Zambezi River, bordering Zambia and Zimbabwe.

Columns of spray can be seen from miles away as millions of gallons of water plummet over the edge per minute (at the height of the flood season) over a width of nearly one and a quarter mile into a deep gorge over 328 feet below. The wide basalt cliff, over which the falls thunder, transforms the Zambezi from a wide placid river to a ferocious torrent cutting through a series of dramatic gorges.

Facing the Victoria Falls is another sheer wall of basalt, rising to the same height and capped by mist-soaked rain forest. A path along the edge of the forest provides the visitor who is prepared to brave the tremendous spray with an unparalleled series of views of the Victoria Falls.  Although less can be seen of the width of the Victoria Falls during the wet season, the intense spray provides welcome relief from the heat, but don’t carry anything you don’t want to get wet!

One special vantage point is across the Knife Edge Bridge, where visitors can have the finest view of the Eastern Cataract and the Main Falls as well as the Boiling Pot where the river turns and heads down the Batoka Gorge. Other vantage points include the Victoria Falls Bridge and the Lookout Tree which commands a panoramic view across the Main Falls.

The first impression is unmistakable; immense power, the raw energy unleashed when the entire Zambezi leaps wildly into an abyss. The scale is massive, the spectacle spellbinding and perpetually changing. The falls hiss and roar as if possessed, they rumble and crash like thunder. Vast clouds spew and billow out from the seething cauldron of its dark impenetrable depths. The moving water creates a magnetism that sucks you closer, so that you recoil in horror to quench a subliminal sacrificial urge.

During the dry season, be sure to take a walk along the lip of the Victoria Falls themselves. Sometimes the water is low enough to walk all the way across to Livingstone Island, the place where David Livingstone himself had his first glimpse of the Victoria Falls. This is surely one of the most magnificent views in the area.

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